“Is she any better, Jan?”
“She’s no worse,” was Jan’s answer. “That’s something, when it comes to this stage. Where’s Lionel?”
“I do not know,” replied Lucy. “I think he went out. Jan,” she added, dropping her voice, “will she get well?”
“Get well!” echoed Jan in his plainness. “It’s not likely. She won’t be here four-and-twenty hours longer.”
“Oh, Jan!” uttered Lucy, painfully startled and distressed. “What a dreadful thing! And all because of her going out last night!”
“Not altogether,” answered Jan. “It has hastened it, no doubt; but the ending was not far off in any case.”
“If I could but save her!” murmured Lucy, in her unselfish sympathy. “I shall always be thinking that perhaps if I had spoken to her last night, instead of going out to find Mr. Verner, she might not have gone.”
“Look here,” said Jan. “You are not an angel yet, are you, Miss Lucy?”
“Not at all like one, I fear, Jan,” was her sad answer.
“Well, then, I can tell you, for your satisfaction, that an angel, coming down from heaven and endued with angel’s powers, wouldn’t have stopped her last night. She’d have gone in spite of you; and of all. Her mind was made up to it; and her telling Lionel in the morning that she’d give up going, provided he would promise to take her for a day’s pleasure to Heartburg, was only a ruse to throw the house off its guard.”
Jan passed down. Lucy sat on. As Jan was crossing the court-yard,—for he actually went out at the front door for once in his life, like he had done the day he carried the blanket and the black tea-kettle,—he encountered John Massingbird. Mr. John wore his usual free-and-easy costume, and had his short pipe in his mouth.
“I say,” began he, “what’s this tale about Mrs. Lionel? Folks are saying that she went off to Hautley’s last night, and danced herself to death.”
“That’s near enough,” replied Jan. “She would go; and she did; and she danced; and she finished it up by breaking a blood-vessel. And now she is dying.”
“What was Lionel about, to let her go?”
“Lionel knew nothing of it. She slipped off while he was out. Nobody was in the house but Lucy Tempest and one or two of the servants. She dressed herself on the quiet, sent for a fly, and went.”
“And danced!”
“And danced,” assented Jan. “Her back and shoulders looked like a bag of bones. You might nearly have heard them rattle.”
“I always said there were moments when Sibylla’s mind was not right,” composedly observed John Massingbird. “Is there any hope?”
“None. There has not been hope, in point of fact, for a long while,” continued Jan. “As any body might have seen, except Sibylla. She has been obstinately blind to it. Although her father warned her, when he was here, that she could not live.”
John Massingbird smoked for some moments in silence. “She was always sickly,” he presently said. “Sickly in constitution; sickly in temper.”
Jan nodded. But what he might farther have said was stopped by the entrance of Lionel. He came in at the gate, looking jaded and tired. His mind was ill at ease, and he had not been to bed.
“I have been searching for you, Jan. Dr. West ought to be telegraphed to. Can you tell where he is?”
“No, I can’t,” replied Jan. “He was at Biarritz when he last wrote; but they were about to leave it. I expect to hear from him daily. If we did know where he is, Lionel, telegraphing would be of no use. He could not get here.”
“I should like him telegraphed to, if possible,” was Lionel’s answer.
“I’ll telegraph to Biarritz, if you like,” said Jan. “He is sure to have left it, though.”
“Do so,” returned Lionel. “Will you come in?” he added, to John Massingbird.
“No, thank you,” replied John Massingbird. “They’d not like my pipe. Tell Sibylla I hope she’ll get over it. I’ll come again by and by, and hear how she is.”
Lionel went indoors and passed up-stairs with a heavy footstep. Lucy started up from her place, but not before he had seen her in it.
“Why do you sit there, Lucy?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, blushing that he should have caught her there, though she had not cared for Jan’s doing so. “It is lonely down stairs to-day: here I can ask everybody who comes out of the room how she is. I wish I could cure her! I wish I could do anything for her!”
He laid his hand lightly on her head as he passed. “Thank you for all, my dear child!” and there was a strange tone of pain in his low voice as he spoke it.
Only Decima was in the room then, and she quitted it as Lionel entered. Treading softly across the carpet, he took his seat in a chair opposite Sibylla’s couch. She slept—for a great wonder—or appeared to sleep. The whole morning long—nay, the whole night long, her bright, restless eyes had been wide open: sleep as far from her as it could well be. It had seemed that her fractious temper kept the sleep away. But her eyes were closed now, and two dark purple rims enclosed them, terribly dark on the wan, white face. Suddenly the eyes unclosed with a start, as if her doze had been abruptly disturbed, though Lionel had been perfectly still. She looked at him for a minute or two in silence, and he, knowing it would be well that she should doze again, neither spoke nor moved.
“Lionel, am I dying?”
Quietly as the words were spoken, they struck on his ear with startling intensity. He rose then and pushed her hair from her damp brow with a fond hand, murmuring some general inquiry as to how she felt.
“Am I dying?” came again from the panting lips.
What was he to answer her? To say that she was dying, might send her into a paroxysm of